Incumbent President John Atta-Mills faces a stiff challenge from the man who challenged him in 2008, Nana Akuffo-Addo, and by most measures it looks like Akuffo-Addo will win, or more accurately Atta-Mills will lose as he seems to be highly unpopular and has made a serious amount of blunders. The devaluation of the cedi, when the cedi was redemoninated it was trading at .75 cedis to the dollar, today it's at 2 cedis to the dollar; the oil contracts were renegotiated so that the government received smaller royalties than it had prior; there have been a number of corruption scandals involving ministers.

The wife of the former president, J.J. Rawlings, mounted a primary challenge to Mills last year, but was soundly rebuffed. This has not deterred them in the least and they've gone off and founded their own party (they haven't announced it yet, but it's all but certain). Considering that Mills margin of victory was less than 0.25% in 08, he's almost certain to lose.

And note that Ghanaian politics is less violent, less ethnic based, and more issue based than in other countries. Mills party, the NDC, is social-democratic whereas Akuffo-Addo's NPP is more liberal; a major point of their platform is to cut import duties, for example.

All I am claiming that both candidates have an >70 - in one case >80 region, of not that many regions. Looks pretty ethnic (or at least sectional) based to me; though I don't know the country well enough. (Just off the top of my head, in many countries ridiculous ethnic bloc voting might not even show up to its full extent on a map like this, you'd have to compare results village-by-village for that as there are no huge ethnic enclaves. It is entirely possible that those - predominating - 50ish regions on this map did not come about in this way.)

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"The secret to having a rewarding work-life balance is to have no life. Then it's easy to keep things balanced by doing no work." Wally

"Our party do not have any ideology... Our main aim is to grab power ... Every one is doing so but I say it openly." Keshav Dev Maurya

And Samia Nkrumah? She's leader of CPP, her father's old party. She would have appeal of daughter of father of nation...

Nkrumah's legacy is mixed as he eventually became a rather authoritarian figure and was eventually deposed in a coup. The NDC largely carries the CPP's left wing flame nowadays. The CPP is a very small party, with Nkrumah the only member of parliament from it, and it's candidate got just under 2% of the vote in 2008, which was third and enough to force a runoff, but it was still... under 2%. I think her leadership may lead to the party's growth, but right now it's minor player whose chair manages to garner attention largely because of who her father was.

I know, right! The major issues were healthcare, education, and youth employment. I'd would have liked to seen more on the obvious issues of spending oil revenues and corruption, but I do enjoy this issues-based debate.

There's also a clever parallel in the NPP's apparent diversity problem- much as the Republican Party is seen as the party of white men, the NPP is being seen as the party of the Ashantis- look at the map and see their regions of strength, and the Western and Brong-Ahafo regions have swung to the NDC.

The NDC has been able to build a coalition of northerners, southerners, and people in the east. Mahama is from the north, Atta-Mills was from the southwest, and JJ Rawlings is half-Ewe from the far East of the country. Akuffo-Addo and Kufour, on the other hand, were both Akan. It seems ethnic, but it's much more akin to what we see in the US than any kind of straight ethnic voting.